Quote:
Originally Posted by kendo65
But you're back into 'what if' scenarios again.
That was my main point before (someone else also made the same point talking about the campaign - as an individual pilot or even a squadron commander you have no real influence in those kinds of questions. You just follow the orders handed down from Group or higher level)
When flying a mission in il2 or SOW you will be given a briefing - your instructions - there is no lee-way. You don't get to choose what targets to attack and you don't get to say that your superior's strategy is rubbish.
The jump to allowing the player to decide targetting and strategy is really a jump to a different game (or a different level). It is something that was never in il2 for instance.
It seems that BOB will restrict a player to fulfilling the role of an individual pilot / squadron commander. You will take part in missions and endeavour through use of tactics and skill to succeed. You won't get to decide the strategy, targetting, etc. If you want a realistic campaign that reflects the experience of the real-life pilots then this is accurate.
If we want a sim that allows us to be Keith Park or Leigh Mallory I think we need a different game, or a massively expanded game that would include resource management elements (pilots, aircraft) and require the player to manage locations for squadrons along with targetting and how the squadrons are used.
Personally speaking, I would love to have a game that covered all of those levels. I just realise how big a leap beyond il2 that would be, and I don't think we're going to get it.
this has got off-topic somewhat, but it all comes out of the debate about the map - the type of game we are going to get determines the type of map we need
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I agree with you. The thing is, i agree because i'm mostly an off-liner. For an online server running realistic missions, the limited initial scope of the new series will mean that lots of mission builders will want to delve into slightly what-if territory.
In that case, the player does in fact shape and decide strategy by the way he's building the mission. Not to mention that if the new multiplayer mode that's been talked about is in fact what most people think and hope it will be (an online dynamic campaign, like DF and coop mode mixed together with supply considerations and monitoring thrown in), the impact of players on deciding the overall strategy becomes even more.
If we think of having this sort of DF server that runs weekly scenarios instead of missions spanning a few hours, it's obvious that there will be no predeterimned briefing like there is in co-ops and single player campaigns, no definite orders, but the players will form up on ad-hoc missions of their own in an effort to achieve the objectives as efficiently as they can.
Give players, any players of any game, the competitive incentive and they will soon come up with a lot of variations that the people in charge back in the day missed or simply didn't want to risk trying.
In that sense, i have a feeling we'll see a hugely succesful use of the 110 for example, with most people using them as fast fighter bombers and for fighter sweeps ahead of the main bomber stream, tactics that were never used in the real battle.
I do agree that the line needs to be drawn somewhere and the game released. However, it would be good to know that if a community made and limited in size map of sufficient quality could be made for the "missing" territory, that it could be incorporated into a patch that joins it with the rest of the official map, just like community submitted aircraft made it into IL-2 in the past. I guess this solution would please everyone in the long run
Edit: I see you guys beat me to it
